Monday, March 24, 2008

Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job

This is pretty much my favorite thing right now. Subsequently I've been watching that Absolut Vodka thing (below) at least once a day, and I can honestly say that it has affected my perception (if I had one) of Absolut Vodka. So it's probably effective advertising in that regard. But I don't care.

Let me see if I can articulate one thing I love about Tim & Eric. They use awkwardness in a way that's similar to alot of comedy today. See The Office (British and American versions), Curb Your Enthusiasm and Flight of The Concords. But in a skit like the one below, the awkwardness (a Zack Galifianakis outburst) is simultaneously framed and interrupted by excessive slurping, glass clinking, a din of ice jiggling, and intricately edited panting in anticipation of more Absolut Vodka being poured, not to mention downright frightening wigs. This makes it more like Monty Python than most contemporary awkwardness and/or topical comedy.

One skit from T&EASGJ, if you can even call it a skit, is Tim & Eric playing, I think, 3 year old boys with toy cars. A middle-aged woman comes down to the basement to check on them. They see her and they start yelling "ooh mama!" repeatedly, first happily then angrily. Then they trash the basement, as the "ooh mama" chant is looped into a song, with a spooky keyboard melody. I won't spoil the end, but that's pretty much all it is.

It might sound stupid. It might be. I don't care. I like stupid, especially annoying stupid.

But the absurdity is decieving. A Tim & Eric episode, at the standard Adult Swim length of 10-11 minutes, weaves together ridiculous tape loops, questionable celebrity impressions ("I'm Jack Nicholson. I like spaghetti & meatballs."), awesome "pumping" footage, and bottom of the screen crawls where Zack Galifianackis reminds you you're watching a show where he plays "The Snuggler", among other things, in a way that's more clever and sophisticated than any sketch comedy I've seen accepting maybe Python or Mr. Show. Season 1 even had a cliffhanger that had ambiguously impaired Casey, of the Uncle Muscles Hour kidnapped by a suspicious man in a van.

Now you might be saying, "Yes Mike, I've seen Tim & Eric Good Job With Your Comedy or whatever its called. My roomate loves it, won't stop watching it actually. And he also somehow managed to eat the entire box of Kellogs Mueslix while I was sleeeping. Besides, I live in Brooklyn and we hear about everything at least 3 months before you do." Well, I am that roomate. I eat your Mueslix.

My vibes might come at least partly from Pop Culture. Which is inherently seedy, and in the mind, inherently fecund and feral.

It's at least half-inherent. Focused outward too, tho at a genial-refraction rate of 10.7 to 55.88, they can be more like high-pressure and low-pressure systems mingling. From time to time they're even formally rigorous. These are the challenging days. And finding a form for the form of them.

What if there were a place that sold curbs called the Curb Store? And this store would sell several different kinds of curbs. It would sell the curbs that, say, are right outside your house, if you live in the city. You could, upon entering The Curb Store, browse several curbs all in a row, each differentiated by size, hue and place of origin. Curbs from New Mexico would be the most valuable, while curbs from New Jersey would be the least valuable. Curbs from New Jersey would probably carry a stigma, cheap, low-grade, only for poor people etc. Eventually curbs from the United States would be outsourced, making those considerations completely moot. People would soon find themselves buying curbs from places they had only previously heard of in filmstrips and postcards, only had any inkling of by seeing them depicted on vintage wallpaper.

These stores would also sell the curbs that come in verb form, say, if you wanted some feeling or sensation to be attenuated or toned down you could put in an order for a "curb action". These "curb actions" would have to be regulated by the government and would be protected under the Second Amendment. The waiting period for such a "curb action" would be 3 to 4 weeks. And in the midst of this waiting period, whatever feeling one wanted "curbed" would slowly dissipate and turn into something else. But this would not stop some people from using curbs for very evil purposes. Some would use curbs to hurt others. And these people would become "criminals" "branded" as such. They would (ideally, this is civilization people!) lose any and all access to curbs for life. And this would be very hard for them because TV shows and commercials would continue to glorify the many uses, both good and evil, of the curb. But everyone, through some vague uncurbable feeling of unanimity, would accept that curbs are a part of life, like waiting for snow to melt and for the UPS man to arrive, which he never does.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Weirder Than You Ever Thought You Could Feelfor Zack

like someone yelling the food at youblasting kisses through the doorwaylike someone perhaps negative about globalismlike barney’s reefer madnesslike bowls of ugly nonstop radio talklike the vitriol of pagans in quevisitations desire to be written abouttalking glamour here, cheap outre space trickslike feeling like sushi very early in the morninglike it was complicated gloivenwhen could you feel weirderpick up the truckstop phonewith Harrison Ford flustered on the other endwrite about the mechanics of poetrydon’t stop believinga man with leather lungs singing out the centuryon the History Channelwhich must be owned by Christianssome programming on there we feel a little weird about

I had a dream that Animal Collective were playing Reverend Green during a Packers game, but Brett Favre had to go up into the luxury box where they were set up and tell them to stop playing because it was distracting him. Later on the day of that dream, Brett Favre announced his retirement. Am I clairvoyant in some really indirect, almost uninterpretable way?